BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN | ROSEMARY LAING: “leak”
In Laing’s new series, an upside-down, single-family home disturbs an otherwise harmonious pastoral landscape. The tension initiated by the aggressive manifestation of a manmade structure in the face of calm natural beauty serves as metaphor: the threat of suburbanization to the idyllic vistas of the Australian landscape. Throughout the past decade, on drives along the south coast of Australia, the artist has witnessed small country towns and farmlands become significantly altered through the socio-economic and environmental pressures of suburban development. Though “leak” focuses specifically on the Cooma-Monaro District in New South Wales, an area that has been the subject of many Australian landscape paintings, Laing’s message easily relates to a broader world context.

KWANG YOUNG CHUN
Born in 1944 in Hongchun, Korea, Kwang Young Chun has exhibited internationally since 1966. He has gained international fame for his unique process of composing structures that consist of thousands of small triangles, each individually hand molded in paper. Young Chun gathers mulberry paper from old books of important Korean texts and dyes the papers into various shades with the help of teas and flowers. The small, minimalist pieces of mulberry paper are then attached one by one to a two-dimensional surface, or built into free-standing sculptures that seem to tell of both distress and poetry.

UNREST: REVOLT AGAINST REASON
Organized by Natalie Musteata, this exhibition presents eight international contemporary artists whose works address issues of inequality, conflict and instability in recent history. Inspired by the recent wave of uprisings in Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan and Morocco, as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement, this exhibition will illustrate how political unrest can quickly gain momentum, extending into streets, offices, schools and involving multiple cultural centers across the world. The selected works by Mounir Fatmi, Claire Fontaine, Shilpa Gupta, Iman Issa, Tala Madani, Ahmet Ögüt, Tomáš Rafa and Alexandre Singh will serve as a reminder that the intersection between creative practice and political activism is not only longstanding but also of the moment.

Tomáš Rafa: “New Nationalism in the Heart of Europe” (single channel video, 2009-12). See “Unrest,” Image courtesy of the artist and apexart

BRENDAN CASS
His paintings can be described as a pictorial discussion of the art of the past, of the here and now, and also of what is to come. His forms are organic, reflecting his belief in nature and living. In the past, he has stated: “Nature is what I’m ultimately giving people, something they already are. My work is a reminder to people, to live.” The sentiment evokes Jackson Pollock’s famous statement: “I am nature.” Cass’s process is rooted in drawing, the paint being applied later to flesh out the compositions. The results are vibrant, vividly brushed conglomerates of forms made from snippets of references to landscapes, human settlements and atmospheric weather patterns.